About motherhood - the good, the bad, the best.
Here are a few things I know - we are all doing the best we can, none of us know exactly what we are doing and we are not in this alone.

Friday, December 2, 2011

The Annual Christmas Letter - My gift to My Children

On my wedding day, my mom gave me a binder filled with laminated copies of all of the family Christmas letters going back to 1968 - their first Christmas together. I read all of the letters and realized that these letters are a journal of our family's life together. I love pulling out the binder and rereading them. My favorites are the year I was born, the year I was married, the years my children joined our big family. I soon realized that documenting my family is going to be very important to me and the biggest gift I am going to give my children. I wanted to follow the tradition my mother started and I also started writing a Christmas letter the first year. The first few years may have been a little boring to others. The purpose of my Christmas letter is to document my family's year. Filling in all of our friends and families on our activities is just a bonus.

I don't know why I can't turn this but here is the page for 2010.

I keep a Family Journal of what we do each year. It's nothing fancy, just a small dimestore (love that word!) notebook. About once a month, I write down things we did that month. I also add the kids milestones, birthday gifts given and received, etc. I also love scrapbooking. I mentioned earlier the family scrapbook with one page for each year. I love this book and I love watching the kids grow in one location and not having to thumb through lots of albums. The reason I started the Family Journal was so I could easily update the Family Album each September (our anniversary). I also keep a shoebox under my bed for ticket stubs, programs, etc. to add to the family album page. Each child has a really nice First Year Scrapbook. Laci has three now for her first three years. Then Calvin was born. After his first year album, I am a little burned out on scrapbooking. I hope I get back to it. I still print out the pictures periodically and file them in envelopes. The extra church offering envelopes are great for this purpose. I can write the activities and stories on the envelope and back of the pictures. Later, I can easily go back and put the pictures in scrapbooks. I have thought about digital scrapbooking but I am not quite there yet for the kids. I have made several digital scrapbooks for other occasions. I like to use the kids artwork and crafts as the backgrounds for the scrapbook. I keep several pictures and date them so I can add them to the appropriate pages. Maybe when the kids get older, I will go to the digital albums. :)

I still don't know why I can't turn it.
This is the first year I did. Not a lot of detail yet.

﻿﻿

I really like this page of Laci's. It has both her crafts
and all of the valentines she got that year in school.

One of the greatest gifts I can give to our children is memories and time spent together. Unfortunately, memories fade. So my mission is to capture them and keep them forever. I look forward to presenting our family history to our children on their wedding days - the day their own families begin.